Hello Jim. Quite agree with all you say.
Plus: the D-Star system I have now allows me to sit in the garden with a handheld running 100mW and speaking to someone AND being able to understand them, on the other side of the world. Yes I could fire up HF battle through the QRM, QRN and idiots and do the same thing but it's nice to have the option. The other thing that gives D-Star the green light is my wife thinks it's cool and she's not impressed with any other branch of the hobby. Thursday, September 2, 2010, 6:50:55 AM, you wrote: JM> There is a lot of room in our hobby for many niche interests and JM> points of view. I became a Ham in the late 1950s and while I JM> started out on AM, I switched to SSB fairly soon after. I have JM> always liked communications quality audio for voice JM> communications. When I discovered a whole subculture of Hams JM> interested in Extended SSB, I had trouble understanding why. I JM> listen to some people with carefully adjusted equalizers that JM> sound like they are transmitting from their bathroom, what with JM> echos etc. But then I realized that as long as they don't hog the JM> bandwidth when a band is busy, there is nothing wrong with them JM> wanting something more than communications quality. JM> JM> I just expect them to respect my preference for narrower audio response over RF. JM> JM> I am thinking D-Star will probably not work out for John, and JM> he'll decide to move on to other parts of Ham radio. Or he'll get JM> involved in experimentation with other types of digital radio that JM> may involve other vocoders and different design parameters (I JM> wonder what Codec2 sounds like?). And if we all live long enough, JM> we will probably see other DV standards evolve. I like to think JM> that if we left the planet and came back in 50 years, the vast JM> majority of Ham transmissions will be some form of digital. It's JM> inevitable. For John's sake, let's hope he has some audio quality choices. JM> JM> In the meantime, I like D-Star audio just fine, since I'm able to JM> understand what everyone is saying. JM> JM> Jim - K6JM -- Best regards, John G8KVP mailto:k...@bigfoot.com
